Transferring data to a new phone is easier than ever. While the early days of smartphones saw long processing times, complicated methods of moving data from one phone to another, and difficult troubleshooting steps, modern smartphones often include software that makes it simple to upgrade from one phone to another.
However, there can still be issues when trying to upgrade a phone. For example, one internet user shared a “hack” for getting the best deal when switching phones and carriers, while another accused T-Mobile of using “girl math” to try to get her on a new plan with a new phone that would end up costing her considerably more in the long term.
Now, a Best Buy employee has sparked discussion after sharing a story in which he helped a customer transfer data, but things didn’t go quite as expected.
A 21-Hour Data Transfer
In a video with over 341,000 views as of Saturday, TikTok user Dallas (@dallas_ponzo) explains how he assisted a customer in getting a new phone.
According to Dallas, a customer came in with a Samsung Galaxy S10e and wished to upgrade it to a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. The old phone had 128GB of storage, which the customer had filled to the brim; the new phone had 512GB of storage.
At first, the upgrade went smoothly, taking only 30 minutes. However, as soon as he tried to transfer data using Samsung’s Smart Switch program, which allows users to move data from one device to another, he says problems began to arise.
“I tried to start the data transfer, and when I plugged both phones into each other, it said Smart Switch needs to update on the new phone,” Dallas recalls. Actually downloading this update was a process in itself, as Dallas had to move closer to the router and free up storage by deleting the Facebook app. Still, the 16 MB app took 25 minutes to download.
Soon, Dallas hit another stumbling block. The old phone needed to clear 8 gigabytes to proceed with the transfer. When Dallas asked if there was anything else that could be deleted, the customer informed him that she had lost her daughter and was hesitant to delete any photos. Dallas offered his condolences for her loss, and soon after, the pair opted to delete Amazon Music, which freed up 68 GB of storage.
Once the process finally began, Dallas realized that the time estimate for the transfer was going to be an hour—which was a problem, because the store closed in 30 minutes. Instead, he switched the transfer to a wireless transfer so that it could continue after they left the store.
As it turns out, it’s a good thing he did. At midnight the same night, the customer texted him that the data transfer had been successful, but that the time needed to organize the data was going to be incredible.
“It gave her an estimate of 21 hours and 40 minutes because she had 278,000 messages,” Dallas states. “A quarter of a million messages. That’s, like, the most I’ve ever seen.”
By the end, Dallas says that everything was able to be transferred and organized successfully.
@dallas_ponzo Small update waste big time
♬ original sound – Dallas
Commenters share their own phone upgrade stories
In the comments section, users offered their thoughts on Dallas’ story.
“I had a customer come in that wanted a terabyte storage 14 pro, because she had over 125,000 photos of her seven cats, that not including pic of her and her family,” a user said.
“Yea so good tip, solid state storage as used in phones will run very slow when full or close to full, probably why that app update took so long, that phone was probably sluggish too,” advised another.
“I had a guy the other day that I sold a phone to and it wouldn’t do the data transfer like this bc he had 456,533 text messages on his old iPhone which was like 60GB of text messages,” stated a third.
The Daily Dot reached out to Dallas via Instagram direct message.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
